Aldermen support designs for new St. Charles police station
A new St. Charles police station that could cost upward of $24 million remains on track to be completed by the fall of 2019 after a set of schematic designs received support from aldermen Monday night.
A wellness center, a squad garage, a training room, and space for community events and outreach services are included in the plans for the new facility, slated for a 6.5-acre site at the Valley Shopping Center.
The building is expected to have prominent signage, individual spaces for each police division and large windows that allow for natural light, architects told the city's government services committee. More importantly, Police Chief James Keegan said, the facility will be more functional and operationally efficient than the existing station in downtown St. Charles.
"What's nice about this project is we get to design it from scratch with a blank canvas," he said. "This is going to give us a state-of-the-art facility."
The designs introduced Monday night got a positive reaction from the committee, with many aldermen saying they like the building's overall appearance. Their informal approval allows the project to move into the next design phase, Public Works Director Peter Suhr said.
The goal is to complete construction by August 2019 and have police moved in within a few months.
Project leaders estimate the plans as presented would cost about $2.3 million more than the city's $24.6 million budget, which includes demolition, site preparation and construction costs, among other expenses. Staff members have been looking at ways to reduce the scope of the project and lower costs without changing the "look and feel" of the proposed building, Suhr said.
Plans for a new police station have been in the works since the department participated in a needs assessment three years ago, Keegan said.
The city council initially voted to build the facility on city-owned land along Red Gate Road. But after months of closed-door conversations, it decided the Valley Shopping Center was a better location and purchased the site off Main Street for $715,000.
The city council in December approved hiring Lake Bluff-based Riley Construction as the project's construction manager. The city also has a contract with Oak Brook-based FGM Architects, which specializes in police stations.
City officials will soon solicit bids for the site's demolition work, which is expected to start this May. That process, as well as other preliminary site work, should be finished by August, at which point construction would begin on the facility.